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Music Apple

Spotify's New Family Plan Is Cheaper, $14.99 For Up To 6 people (techcrunch.com) 67

Posted by msmash from the music-battlestation dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Spotify on Monday announced some changes to its family plan subscriptions, allowing them to use Spotify Premium for $14.99 per month and get six different Spotify accounts and profiles. This is the exact same deal as the one you can get on Apple Music today. Spotify is just making sure you're not going to move your entire family over to Apple Music for pricing reasons. The company introduced family plans back in 2014. At the time, it was one of the first subscription services with family plans. You could get 50 percent off extra Spotify accounts. So it would cost you $14.99 for two accounts, $19.99 for three accounts, $19.99 for four accounts, etc. For big families with at least three accounts, the new Spotify family plan is cheaper. For singles and couples, it's the same price.
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Spotify's New Family Plan Is Cheaper, $14.99 For Up To 6 people More

Spotify's New Family Plan Is Cheaper, $14.99 For Up To 6 people

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  • Crazy how others want to profit from other people's thoughts, isn't it?

  • I'm sorry... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 23, 2016 @09:42AM (#52164493)

    Is this actually news, or is it just a fucking ad?

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by garcia ( 6573 )

      I think you meant: Welcome to Slashdot

      You're complaining about this? Seriously? If you have alternatives to this, by all means, employ them; it's great that you choose to do so (something we all fully support), but the vast majority of people like having easy options to use, even if they're subscription based.

    • Kids: youtube, youtube-dl, and sharing mp3s at will during school or while hanging out. otherwise pandora, or some freemium service that caters to obscure genres like glitch-core or butter-pickle-hop or whatever squeeling fan belt noises kids listen to these days.

      No kidding. My daughter was recently telling me about the websites she listens to right now... it's mostly background music from games like Harvest Moon and Minecraft.

      Good luck keeping up with "the kids", Spotify, Apple, Pandora et. al.

    • Kids: [...] obscure genres like glitch-core or butter-pickle-hop or whatever squeeling fan belt noises kids listen to these days.

      You owe me a coffee. And a new keyboard.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by enjar ( 249223 )

      As a fellow dad, this just saved me $10/month. I like being not tied to one platform only, or having a platform be so obviously be second fiddle -- "Apple Music runs on Android". We also avoid the hot abortion that is iTunes.

      Wife: has Android phone, a Kindle, a laptop for work and we have a shared desktop. Spotify has all her playlists on all those platforms.
      Me: I listen using the Spotify web interface at work, sync albums to the phone for driving so I don't burn through data plan. Whenever the corporate Li

    • Glitch-core. I like that. Lemme fire up FL

  • Family plans usually have a "one household" restriction in their terms and conditions, but here Spotify didn't put any requirements on where or who the...

    primary account holder and up to five (5) subsidiary accounts (“sub-accounts”)

    ...need to be.

    The conspiracy theorist in me says it was intentional, since Spotify and Apple Music know they could make way more money if they cut their subscription rates—and have repeatedly tried to do so—but the labels are adamant about a $10/mo minimum. This could be a clever end-run around their contractual obligations.

    • Labels are insane to ask for $10/mo for streaming music. I pay less than that to watch unlimited movies and TV shows with Netflix.

      I'd pay at most $5/mo for music, but there's so many free streaming options out there that it's not even worth looking for paid alternatives, no matter how good they are.

  • People pay for music streaming?? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Why?!?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by enjar ( 249223 )

      Because spending (now) $3.75 a month means I can easily find the music I like and listen to it everywhere as well as syncing it to my phone.

      Compared to the $20 I used to spend on a CD that had two good songs, it's a bargain. Even at the old price it was a bargain. I've listened to more new artists than ever since I got Spotify as there are effectively zero barriers to entry for me to find new music and up and coming artists. This has also translated into much more regular concert attendance, as up and comin

    • Because it's worth $10 a month for the convenience of not scouring the Internet for free music.

  • And as an added bonus, Spotify won't delete all your existing music during setup.

  • Thanks for letting us know (Score:5, Funny)

    by Cajun Hell ( 725246 ) on Monday May 23, 2016 @10:35AM (#52164877) Homepage Journal
    In other important News for Nerds, CostCo has a great deal on dairy products and Jiffy Lube just mailed me a coupon for $15 off my next oil change (so watch your mailbox, everyone!).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

      In other important News for Nerds, CostCo has a great deal on dairy products

      I shop at Sam's you insensitive clod!

  • How can you people claim you're 'cutting the cord' when you PAY for all these rediculous streaming services? Go back to owning your own music, not paying every month to listen to it, and turn on the nice, free, broadcast radio otherwise, and not use up your expensive, overpriced dataplans. Seriuously: Pay for a connection to the Internet, then pay someone for content, too, every month? Rediculous. You're just cutting one cord and getting TWO new ones.

    • hmm... interesting thought. Although I've never heard Music Streaming services be referred to as Cord Cutting folks (just Cable TV) - you do bring up an interesting paradigm. If one cut the cord - wouldn't they be switching to plain old AM/FM radio? First time I ran into this was listening to my local radio station --- streamed over the internet. It made me think of building an in-home Wifi device with AM/FM radio on it.

      But I have cut the cord - I now stream HDTV in my house over Wifi to my devices and

      • I've been listening to the radio my entire life, regardless of tape, CDs, MP3s, internet radio (back when it was free) or streaming; I've even tried streaming, and found it lacking. Broadcast radio has never been perfect, but then again what is? Yes, you have to listen to commercials -- but commercials or no, you pay one way or another. You don't always get to hear exactly what you want to hear, but if you want that you have to pay anyway. The only way you don't have to pay is if you pirate. I'd rather own

        • My father listens to Canadian radio because the ads are in French. He finds that not being able to understand them makes the content more enjoyable - more background noise. :-)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbolden ( 176878 )

      I've been a Pandora user for years. I have a dozen custom radio stations. jbolden radio, filled with songs jbolden likes and the entire spectrum is organized around jbolden's various interests. I can't get anything remotely that good with broadcast.

      I'm thinking of switching to Spotify because Pandora isn't keeping up. As for the data plan the services run about 1m / minute. Data in bulk is running about $3-5/gig.

  • You gotta say, this is one of the good results of competition. Apple started with the $15/mo family plan, then Google added, now Spotify must compete.

    Of course, with pricing exactly the same one would wonder if it's the music industry who's actually setting the price...

  • I have the cheap Slacker plan at $5 /mo and while you can only have one stream active, you can cache to somewhere around 5 devices, as I recall, so everyone can listen to a cached station simultaneously without any additional fee. I've not directly compared to Spotify, which I read has a larger library, but I've been pleased enough with it.
  • Given how much goes to the hands of middlemen and just a pittance to the artists, I am happy obtaining the music I want through non-subscription means and alternate distribution channels.

    Seriously, I can't see how people would stomach paying more than $20-40 a year for unlimited, well curated music and music suggestions. The current Spotify and Pandora pay models are just stupid overpriced.

    Secondly, I already pay for most of the music. You know the products which the do the radio ads which pay for the mus

    • Seriously, I can't see how people would stomach paying more than $20-40 a year for unlimited, well curated music and music suggestions. The current Spotify and Pandora pay models are just stupid overpriced.

      I pay it and it works for me. It makes it very easy to listen to whatever I want to without having to commit to buying the albums. If I had bought all of the albums that I have found on Spotify, I'd have spent more than the subscription fee. Plus, I've discovered whole music genres that I previously ignored. It's been great. I think of Spotify as the music version of Netflix.

      • And it would be all kinds of great and awesome, if they could actually be bothered to pay the artists more than an insulting pittance.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbolden ( 176878 )

      I doubt very much the artist is getting $8-14 on a $10-15 CD. Between the wholesaler and the seller the record company isn't getting nearly that much.

      • I was speaking of buying CD directly from the artists, like when they do live shows, not people with a signed distributor / contract.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jbolden ( 176878 )

          Then in that case they are making money as the point of sale, distributor, some of the print shop money (organizing), often the artist, recording company.... The fact that they are also the artist is incidental. They are just cutting out most of the other players and doing the work themselves.

          Its not really apples to apples, those other parts still exist.

  • Is it safe to assume that like restaurants, amusement parks and many other marketers, this family plan discriminates against single people? Singles typically pay ~60% of what a family of five would pay.

    Here's the math: Price for a family of five for a popular movie ~$22+ popcorn. Single person for a popular movie ~$14. Overhead cost to theater owner for five seats (popular movie) ~$5; cost for 1 seat ~$1. Profit to theater owner for family ~$17; profit for single person ~$13; profit for 5 single persons ~$

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbolden ( 176878 )

      Families consume less resources per person than singles. For example when I used to take my child to Disney regularly I'd spend 2 hrs sitting on a bench giving her a nap. You think I ever did something like that when I took a date or a friend to an amusement park as a single?

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